The Devil's Backbone (Special Edition)
by Guillermo del Toro
from Sony Pictures
No Description Available
No Track Information Available
Media Type: DVD
Artist: ALMODOVAR,PEDRO
Title: DEVIL'S BACKBONE
Street Release Date: 04/25/2006
Genre: HORROR
Seething passions, wandering ghosts, and an unexploded bomb fill this beautifully filmed tale of war and suspense. Though The Devil's Backbone was advertised as a horror movie in the States, it's really more of a drama that happens to have ghosts in it. During the Spanish Civil War, young Carlos is abandoned at a completely isolated orphanage. The tensions therein have been building for years, exacerbated by the unexploded bomb resting menacingly in the courtyard. Bullies scheme, tempers flare, and a ghost that visits Carlos's bed seems to be the key to it all. The movie is full of excellent performances, especially by Marisa Paredes as the gruff-but-kind headmistress, Eduardo Noriega as the handyman with secrets to keep, and Federico Luppi as the benevolent professor who likes to keep deformed fetuses in jars. A rich, satisfying drama with some good, spooky fun thrown in. --Ali Davis
Martin (Hache)
by Adolfo Aristarain
from Strand Releasing
The story of a father and a son. Martin the father is a film director who lives in Madrid and cannot reconnect with his past and Martin (Hache), his son, named for his distant father. They meet again after five years when an accident lands Hache at death's door.
Men With Guns
by John Sayles
from Sony Pictures
It is impossible to predict where John Sayles will travel at any given time in his film career, but Men with Guns is one of the director's most surprising journeys. Shot in Spanish, with a little-known cast, the film is a beguiling mix of the political and the mythical. A well-heeled doctor (Argentine actor Federico Luppi) in an unnamed Latin country leaves his comfortable home, in search of former medical students who may be caught in the political violence of the countryside. Although Sayles casts an unflinching eye on the issues of poverty and "willful ignorance" (embodied by the doctor, a well-meaning but complacent man), Men with Guns has a lush visual style and a great grab-bag of songs on the soundtrack. It's a slow and sometimes dreamlike movie, but by the time we reach the end it feels as though something special has transpired. --Robert Horton
Common Ground
by Adolfo Aristarain
from Fox Lorber
Fernando, a respected university professor, and Lili, his devoted wife, have happily lived in Buenos Aires for many years. Without warning, they find their comfortable world threatened when Fernando is forced into early retirement. Facing an uncertain future, the couple relocates to the countryside where they bravely set out on a new chapter of their lives.
The Devil's Backbone
by Guillermo del Toro
from Sony Pictures
Seething passions, wandering ghosts, and an unexploded bomb fill this beautifully filmed tale of war and suspense. Though The Devil's Backbone was advertised as a horror movie in the States, it's really more of a drama that happens to have ghosts in it. During the Spanish Civil War, young Carlos is abandoned at a completely isolated orphanage. The tensions therein have been building for years, exacerbated by the unexploded bomb resting menacingly in the courtyard. Bullies scheme, tempers flare, and a ghost that visits Carlos's bed seems to be the key to it all. The movie is full of excellent performances, especially by Marisa Paredes as the gruff-but-kind headmistress, Eduardo Noriega as the handyman with secrets to keep, and Federico Luppi as the benevolent professor who likes to keep deformed fetuses in jars. A rich, satisfying drama with some good, spooky fun thrown in. --Ali Davis
The Stone Raft
by George Sluizer
from Image Entertainment
The Spanish peninsula tears away from the rest of continental Europe and is propelled like a huge stone raft toward a catastrophic collision.
+++
